Re: [Evolution] Gdk-WARNING **: shmget failed!

[Michael Rothwell <rothwell holly-springs nc us>]

Thank you; I'll try that. It's my understanding that gtk 1.2.9 will
allocate a smaller number of larger segments per process (perhaps one
large one), which will alleviate this problem as well. It might be nice
if the kernel supported altering that value via /proc.

-M

"Dirk-Jan C . Binnema" wrote:
> Hi,
>
> (I only saw the 'Re:' to this message, if I understand it well, it's
> about the annoying 'Gdk-WARNING **: shmget failed!')
>
> This problem is discussed in the GNOME Faq (http://www.gnome.org/faqs/users-faq/problems.html):
>
> Q:  Why do I get Gdk-WARNING **: shmget failed!  when I try to run some programs?
>
> A: This error indicates that the application is not able to get a
> shared memory segment. There are a number of reasons why this could
> happen, including:
>
> shared memory is not set up (properly) on the system
>
> all shared memory segments are being used
>
> GNOME and Gdk applications use a lot of shared memory segments
> (typically 6 segments per process that uses shared memory), so it is
> possible your system was not configured with enough segments to
> support GNOME with a lot of applications running. (Note that many
> GNOME applications can be run without using shared memory by starting
> them with the flag --no-xshm.)
>
> The following instructions apply for the Linux kernel. First, find out
> the maximum number of shared memory segments your kernel is configured
> for by typing ipcs -l. Look for the line starting with "max number of
> segments = ". If it is 128 or less, it is likely that this is not
> enough. Depending on how many applications and applets you use, you
> made need quite a few more.
>
> To increase the number of shared segments with kernel 2.2, you have to
> increase the _SHM_ID_BITS variable in
> /usr/src/linux/include/asm/shmparam.h. The number of shared memory
> segments is 2 raised to the power of _SHM_ID_BITS. Thus, 7 corresponds
> to 128, 8 to 256, 9 to 512, and 10 to 1024. You will then need to
> rebuild your kernel and reboot for the change to become active.
>
> --Dirk-Jan.